


I’m the Spy

by LastTrainHome



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Armitage Hux is Not Nice, Canonical Character Death, Navel-Gazing, POV First Person, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-25 09:35:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22254022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LastTrainHome/pseuds/LastTrainHome
Summary: Closing thoughts from the visionary general Armitage Hux, may I rest in peace.(Or, Synthesizing Episode IX's Hux with the Hux we knew and shuddered at in Episodes VII and VIII)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	I’m the Spy

First, there was order.

In the beginning, there was: nothing. Pointless matter and energy, with no design, no function, no true form. Nothing to come first or after; no life, no progress, nobody to look up in wonder and to look down in wisdom, no hands for building and breaking and making things anew. And then, order, and all the _firsts_ began. From all that pointless matter and energy came all the worlds that have ever been, and all that ever will be. Such worlds! Countless thousands, all spinning and moving in order, dancing through the galaxy, each on its own arc, predictable, measurable, ordered, forever. Binary sunsets and hyperspace and the chemistry that makes a Bespin fizz . . . fizz.

I was born into that dance. Like all life, I came from order, and when I die, the order of decay will make me into the stuff new life grows from. It’s predictable. It’s perfect. It doesn’t end.

It’s the stuff in between that’s messy. The living part. 

But oh, how I lived. I found my arc, and I followed it. I took wayward people and showed them their purpose. I put what I saw into the eyes of billions, and they followed that vision to their own places in the grand order. I put down the diseased and disordered things that introduced chaos into my galaxy: the forces that rebelled against order, that twisted the growth of societies into something evil, that devoured clarity and bent the arc and threatened to set all my worlds careening lost and alone through the void. I saved my worlds. I dug out the sickness, burned it, salted the soil. I turned the infectious moral darkness of Hosnian Prime into the perfect order of a bright new star. I _created._

I’m so afraid, so very afraid. They say there's a spy; they whisper it and watch each other, and sometimes they all turn their eyes on _me._ I shake all the time. I’ve spilled tea on my uniform twice today, and the laundry droids are getting _sarcastic._ I’ve never had the steadiest of nerves--I’m a passionate man by nature, and a delicate constitution is my burden to bear--but these last months have been one horror after another, and suddenly I can’t see what’s just ahead of me. Or what’s just ahead for my worlds. I can see what’s further ahead, of course; I can always see that. The universe set right. All the stars moving in their courses.

But the rot is here, on my very ship, and I cannot see how to get from this horrible _now_ to that beautiful future. I think I won’t get to it, not in life. But my worlds will. Some of them, at least. I’ll hand them over to the last holdouts of the delusional, wretched New Republic, and some of them will survive. Most of them will suffer, as the dreamers and heroes of that movement grow old and weak, and the vultures become heads of state. Mercenaries, crime lords, and military leaders. Generals like myself, but without this heart that beats to the pulsing of the stars. People with enough power to take more power, shortsighted and driven by lust for comfort, for adulation, for pretty things, and once they have the worlds under their control, they’ll suck the marrow from those worlds and die fat and paranoid. 

But it’s still better than letting Palpatine have them.

The dead speak. They shouldn’t. When a life is over, it’s over; that’s the way of order. The Jedi are a blight on the galaxy, twisting the process of growth and decay, breaking every natural law starting with gravity and ending with death itself. The Force is not for us; it’s out of order for us to seize it and use it to our petty little ends. Empires rise and fall--mine did--but all things return to order, they _must_ return to order! and the Jedi, and the Sith, are a cult devoted to breaking that order. I’m afraid they’re strong enough to really do it, Palpatine and Ren together. 

Kylo Ren! There's no word in any language for the hatred I feel for him. It's surprising the decking doesn't melt beneath my feet. Everything this youngling in Sith armor does--every tantrum he throws on my ship, every piece of _extremely expensive_ equipment he slices to bits, every stormtrooper he demoralizes--it’s the prequel to what Palpatine will do to all my worlds. Rattle every work of my hands apart, slash the bones of the universe open, leave all life in a ruin of confusion and despair. He's made himself a god, but a hollow one, a god of empty space and rusting wreckage, slavering after power for its own sake, purposeless, turning progress into chaos, dismantling everything that's ever belonged to anyone besides himself. He’ll laugh while he does it, while he makes my stars go dark.

The First Order died when we learned that Palpatine lived. 

But I’m not without hope. Order always wins over chaos. And right now, I'm still dancing on an arc that I can see, just under my feet, even if I can’t see the curve ahead. Right now, I’m delivering my worlds safely to the blasted Resistance, and out of Palpatine’s hands. Right now, I’m making sure that the stars stay alight.

The Emperor will lose. His little brute Kylo Ren will lose. Chaos must lose. It’s how the universe works: First, and finally, order.

There’s not enough tea in seven systems to stop my hands from shaking.

It’s all right. It’s all right. I’m the spy. I think they know it. I’m the spy. I save my worlds. The star I set in the Hosnian system is burning. It’ll go on burning for billions of years. Kylo Ren and Palpatine will die, and I’ll die, and become dust, and from the dust stars will be born. From order, to order. Forever.

Sithspit, I hope I don’t lose my head and shout a confession or something undignified like that. No. Steady on, General. Take a breath and straighten your uniform, and remember this: you came from order, to order you will go, and on this day, you will be order.

Damn. I’ve spilled tea on myself again.

**Author's Note:**

> On the shelf in Hux's quarters:
> 
> -Arkanis Breakfast Blend  
> -Earl Alner (good for making an Imperial City Fog if the Bantha milk is fresh)  
> -Prince of Alderaan Blend  
> -A tea-for-one set with cheery little yellow flowers on it  
> -A six-cup teapot of fine Chandrilan porcelain, which never gets used because Hux is insufferable and nobody wants to sip tea while flinching through a shouted, bulleted list of reasons the First Order is the destiny of all the systems in the galaxy  
> -Sugar cubes, stacked to precision with a speed square  
> -A picture of his mom  
> -The speed square  
> -A copy of "Seven Habits of Highly Intimidating Generals"  
> -A backup speed square


End file.
